Pride Month 2024: BART’s Terri Hodges on saying what she feels, meaning what she says, and bringing a dash of weird to the workplace

Happy Pride Month from all of us at BART! 

BART gets very into the Pride spirit every year. Throughout the month, we'll be publishing more stories, walking in the San Francisco Pride Parade with the BARTmobile, and releasing new Pride merch. 

Speaking of merch...

BART's new 2024 Pride Tees are now listed for sale on Railgoods.com.

Terri is modeling the t-shirt above. More merch coming soon. 

Read about the history of BART's iconic Pride merch here. 

“I am large, I contain multitudes,” wrote the 19th-century queer poet Walt Whitman in his celebrated poem, Song of Myself.  

The famous line could not be more relevant when talking about Terri Hodges, BART’s Director of Risk and Insurance Management.  

She’s a multitudinous woman: a partner, dog mom, “insurance geek,” high-ranking manager, and an exceptional pool party hostess for her “gaybors” (gay + neighbors = gaybors). Add to the list: BART’s Director of Risk and Insurance Management.

The “song of herself” she returns to each Pride Month is Born This Way by Lady Gaga “because it’s not just inclusive of gay people, but so many others.” And to Terri, inclusivity and intersectionality are what Pride Month is all about.  

“The thing is, people think Pride Month is one month where everyone’s great to each other and celebratory,” she said. “But for me and my partner, it’s not just a month. That’s just how we live our life.” 

Besides her famous pool parties, Terri doesn’t do much out of the ordinary to celebrate Pride Month. 

“I celebrate my gayness by doing all the things people who aren’t gay do,” she said. “I love my house, I love my girl, I love my dog. I just celebrate people. It’s not about being gay or not gay, it’s about being a good person.”  

As you can imagine, Terri’s kindness-first approach makes her a much-loved manager at BART, where she’s worked for 29 years. One of her longtime colleagues, Liability Risk Analyst Steve Shatz, called Terri “a flexitarian: somebody who does what it takes to accommodate their employees.”

A photo from one of Terri and Patti’s ”gaybor” pool parties during Pride Month.  

Terri and Steve have worked together for nearly three decades. When they are not referring to each other as husband and wife – “I’ve known Terri longer than my real wife. There isn’t really anything about me that she doesn’t know,” Steve said – they call each other “Scabby.” It’s a long story for another article, but it’s illustrative of something key to Terri’s workplace disposition. The best kind of work relationship, she said, is one in which you can be honest and fun (and trust that everyone gets their work done). The other members of the Risk and Insurance Management team, Matt Goltaio and Tesia Bell, have nicknames, too. Sometimes they call each other hybrids of their real names –  just to keep the jovial camaraderie in play. 

“We kid with one another and have a very breezy relationship, while still being very professional,” Terri said of the close-knit team.  

The playful, inclusive environment at BART is quite different from the atmosphere at the insurance companies Terri worked for early in her career. Before coming to BART, Terri experienced frequent discriminatory behavior – things like people asking her if she was “really gay” or acting inappropriately at company functions.  

The Bay Area has long been a trailblazer in advocating and securing equal rights for all. But when Terri was growing up in Concord, she said “the mindset was different” than it is now.  

"When I was younger, it was either you’re gay or you’re straight. There was no in between. Even bisexuality was considered way out of the norm,” she said. Stringent categorization didn’t exactly work for Terri. She's someone who likes existing within the liminal spaces of human experience.  

“When I was younger, it wasn’t that I wasn’t secure with my sexuality, but I was very fluid in it,” she said. “I wasn’t always just gay. I’ve come out and gone back in. I’ve always liked people for who they are, not necessarily because of their gender.” 

A recent photo of Patti (left) and Terri (right). 

Growing up, Terri was fortunate to always feel safe and supported in her sexuality. She doesn't really have a “coming out story,” she said. The coming out just happened naturally.  

“When I first realized I liked women, I was in high school. My parents were like you have a boyfriend, though. And I was like, I want a girlfriend, too,” she said. “My parents didn't totally get it, but they said, if that makes you happy, that makes you happy. I feel so grateful to have that support system because I know many don’t.”  

That early encouragement had a lasting impact on Terri and her character.  

“What I bring to the table is inclusivity and understanding that not everyone has had the opportunity to be treated equally,” she said. “I hope to bring a level of kindness and understanding to people who have not always been given that luxury because of who they are, what their status is.” 

She continued: “Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and love. Not always respect, though. You have to earn that!”  

Terri has the right demeanor for the work she does. Balancing compassion with professionalism is crucial in her field. At face value, the group “is the least sexy department at BART,” Terri said. But there's more to it than meets the eye. The department thoroughly researches every claim that comes to BART guided by goals of fairness and protection of taxpayers and riders who fund BART. 

“Claim settlements come from taxpayer money,” Terri said. “I’m a taxpayer myself, and it is my fiduciary duty to make certain that if we owe it, we pay it, and if we don’t owe it, we don’t pay it.” For a time, she admits she was known as “Hell No Hodges.” 

One must strike a balance between BART’s fiduciary duty while thoughtfully holding space for the complicated emotions a person or family experiences after a crime or tragedy. BART is public, and anything can happen on public property. But as Terri says, “Just because it happened on BART doesn’t mean its our responsibility.”  

“We’re not an insurer of the public, we can’t afford to be,” Terri explained. “But we do have an obligation to approach each claim with kindness.”  

Patti and Terri at SF Pride 2015. 

The emotionally taxing work is made easier by the warm, accepting environment that has held sway at BART since Terri started working there almost three decades ago.  

“I have had the best experience at BART. I have never been an outcast for my sexuality. Everyone is unbelievably inclusive, and every manager has supported and advocated for me,” Terri said. “BART goes hard with Pride. We have the swag, the parade, the celebrations for employees. But we don't just celebrate Pride; we celebrate all diverse communities. And that’s not just because BART has to. There is a genuine warmth here. People can be who they are.” 

Terri is a woman of multitudes, but also contradictions. As an insurance professional, she is by default “risk averse" (“risk” is literally in her job title). But multiple times a year, Terri and her partner, Patti, go diving. Their dive trips have taken them from Hawaii to Belize, Mexico to Australia. 

“I’m risk averse yet I’m doing one of the riskiest things ever,” Terri laughed, admitting she usually swims down just about 50 feet, where she can still see the surface. She leaves the deep-sea thing to Patti. 

And soon, the couple will have a lot more time to dive. Terri plans to retire next year. She's already mentally preparing for the milestone that she knows will “be hard and sad.” 

“This is the place that has allowed me to grow both professionally and personally into the person I am,” Terri said. And that person is one who “says what I feel, means what I say, and tries to be as solid of a human as I can be – but sometimes in a weird way.”